


I'm Not Crying, You're Crying

by everylemon



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV, Gen, Noctis Lucis Caelum is Bad at Feelings, it should be crack but it's not actually crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28651266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everylemon/pseuds/everylemon
Summary: A bug flies into Noct's eye during a press conference about his mother.Feelings ensue.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 66





	I'm Not Crying, You're Crying

**Author's Note:**

> *I'm* not constantly writing fanfiction to avoid the stress of the world, *you're* constantly writing fanfiction to avoid the stress of the world.
> 
> Wait.

He sees it while he and Prompto are walking to class after picking up coffee from the corner cafe before school.

“Okay, but what if — and hear me out — what if the aliens had evolved to incorporate technology into their bodies?” Prompto is saying. “Because then there could be alien-robot hybrids with the strengths of both.”

“Yeah, but also the weaknesses of both, so it still all comes down to the level of robot technology,” Noct argues back. 

Prompto starts waxing poetic about the wasted potential of biotechnology in low-budget sci-fi films, but Noct’s not paying attention, because that's when they pass the news stand and Noct sees his own face. A lot of his own face. On a lot of different papers.

It’s a photo from yesterday, from the dedication at the park being named after his mother. And he’s _trying to get a bug out of his eye._

It had been long and boring, but it had been Ignis’s day off, so he’d been on his best behavior. (If he the messed stuff up when Ignis took days off, Specs would work continually until an early death.) He’d stood correctly, sat correctly, positioned his face correctly, said the right words in the right tone, hadn’t itched that spot on his back that he had needed to scratch for the entirety of the park commissioner’s speech . . .

Except.

Except for when the wind had gusted suddenly, and something had blown straight into his eye, huge and not at all ignorable. He’d tried to duck his head, but he’d had to wipe his eye with his hand, and it had been pretty gross because there had been a tiny little dead gnat on his knuckle when he’d pulled it away. But it had been like half a second, so what the actual hell, why on earth were half of Insomnia’s print editions publishing a photo of him rubbing his eye —

“Dude, don’t to that to me, I walked half the block talking to myself about tentacles.” Prompto was skidding back to where he’d stopped. “Are you . . . Oh.” He puts a hesitant hand on his shoulder. “Hey, are you okay?”

“I wasn’t . . . Why would they . . .”

“Noct, it’s totally fine. I get it, I really do.” He sounds really sad about it, which Noct feels like isn’t the right response to whatever this weirdness is, but then he realizes.

Oh.

_Sad._

He sees it, now: It looks like he’s crying.

He’d ducked his head to hide his face, and so now all you can see is his hand raised to his eyes, as if to wipe away tears. The weird down-turned grimace of his mouth (because BUG in EYE) make it look like his face has crumpled into tears. 

And the headlines . . . The story is on three different covers, but it’s not the main headline, so he has to scan down to read them: _Park Dedication Brings Reminders of a Life Cut Short. Prince Noctis Helps Honor Departed Mother at Namesake Park. New Park Dedicated to Aulea Lucis Caelum a Poignant Tribute to Late Queen._

They all have the same photo credit; it’s a wire photo. Only a couple of reporters had even showed up to the dedication of the park, which was really just a lawn with a couple of benches on a quieter street. The planning board had approached King Regis about naming it after Aulea; he’d said yes and sent Noct to represent the family. It was the kind of easy, low-stakes thing he could handle for his dad. Someone had said a few lines about her legacy and love for flowers, which Noct had thought was kind of funny because the park had no flowers. But suddenly, with this picture of him openly weeping, it apparently made a compelling story.

Prompto’s tugging on his arm gently, like he might break. “Noct, we’ve only got two minutes before the bell, we’re gonna be late unless run.”

So they run, and he doesn’t have a chance to explain because they _are_ late, even though they sprint the whole way.

He spends the first class of the day not learning anything about chemistry, fantasizing about running away to Accordo and wondering which Astral he’s offended.

He spends the second class of the day pretending to order pastries from his conversation partner in traditional Tenebraen, and that doesn’t leave much room for feeling embarrassed, thankfully.

He spends the third class wondering how much shit Gladio is gonna give him.

Then it’s lunch, when he can sneak a peek at his phone. Sure enough, there’s a text from Gladio: **Hey, hope ur ok. I kno the press sucks. But its ok 2 b sad about it, u kno I get it.**

He’s still staring at it with his jaw hanging open when Prompto finds him outside the cafeteria. They don’t have lunch together this year, so Noct usually just takes his lunch outside and eats it while walking to keep his knee from locking up after sitting all day. Today, though, it’s starting to rain.

“Hey, buddy, got a second?” Prompto asks.

“Don’t you have class in a minute?”

“Yeah, I just . . .” Prompto swings a lanky army behind his head, scratching at the base of his neck, and they move to the side of the hallway. “I know you’ve gotta jet before the end of the day and I just wanted to make sure you were OK.”

“Yeah, Prompto, I really wasn’t — I just had something in my eye.” Gods, it sounds like a lame excuse.  
  
“Haha, suuuuure, man, if you insist,” says Prompto, who must think he’s joking to like, deflect the emotion of the moment. Not that Noct would ever do that, except of course he would. “But like, it’s okay, you know.”

“I know,” Noct says, trying not to sound exasperated because Prompto has his Deep Talk face on, and it’s really nice of him to be checking in on him, even if he wants to vanish into the earth. “But I’m serious, it’s OK, I never really knew my mom and I don’t —”

“I’m adopted,” Prompto says. He's staring at his shoes.

That shuts Noct up.

Then he realizes he should to say something. Something affirming. “Oh, that’s cool — I mean, thanks for telling me. Are you —”

Prompto drags a deep breath in and it’s clear he’s been sitting on this for a while. “Nah, it’s fine, I don’t think about it too much ‘cause I was like, a year old, so I don’t remember anything either. But, uh, I feel really sad when I think about my . . . biological parents, too. Like, I have parents, so it’s not that bad but —”

Prompto swallows hard. His friend seems intrinsically programmed to downplay anything bad that has ever happened to him, but he clearly brought this up in the first place to tell Noct _not_ to downplay it, so he's stuck there. “But I just wanted to say, I get it, that you can not remember her but still be sad. It’s not weird, or anything.”

Noct wants to evaporate into the sky, but he forces himself to reach out and catch Prompto’s elbow instead. “Thanks for telling me, Prompto. That really helps. To know.”

Prompto smiles so wide, so relieved, that Noct suddenly knows himself to be a fundamentally terrible person on a dazzling array of different levels. It’s insane that he’s somehow missed that self-awareness before now.

“You better get to class, but uh. Thanks,” Noct says. “Really.”

Prompto claps him on the shoulder one more time and takes off sprinting down the hall, turning the corner just as the bell rings.

By the time the day is ending, he’s noticing that some kids have definitely seen the picture of him, because they nudge each other and look at him with sad faces. No one laughs, which is kind of what he’d been expecting, but apparently crying over your dead mom is pretty understandable.

So . . . He’s pretty sure he should have been crying over his dead mom for the past 16 years, but somehow he missed the memo.

He does, indeed, have to jet before the end of school. A driver comes to get him and take him to the Citadel for a security briefing; Ignis is already there, so he spends the ride quiet in the backseat.

First, he forces himself to text Gladio: **Thanks man. Preciate it.** He can only hope Gladio mistakes the shortness for him being dumb, and not the actual evidence it is that he has no heart.

He begins to think about his feelings, then decides he has hit his feelings quota for the day.

He plays Kings Knight instead.

Later that evening, he’s back in his apartment doing homework while Ignis is chopping up vegetables for soup in the kitchen. The repetitive sound of the heavy knife on the cutting board is comforting in the background.

But he can’t stop thinking about feelings. The ones he doesn’t . . . feel.

Maybe he’s just never realized what he’s missing? Not only does he not remember anything about his mother, but moms in general are kind of scarce in his circle. Ignis doesn’t have one. Gladio doesn’t have one. Prompto has one, but kind of on a technicality.

Or, maybe he’s a low-level sociopath. Maybe he’s emotionally stunted from lack of maternal attachment or something. Who knows? This is probably the kind of thing you ask your mom, if have one.

“Iggy?”

“Yes, Noct?”

“Can I ask you something? You don’t have to answer.”

“Ask and you’ll find out,” Ignis say, using the blunt edge of the knife to scrape onions and garlic into the pot. They hit hot oil and sizzle.

“Do you . . .” _Have feelings?_ No. If he’s going to ask Ignis about this, he isn’t gonna make it about _himself_. Not after he’d almost literally interrupted Prompto telling him he’s adopted. “Do you remember a lot? About your mom.”

“Ah,” Ignis says, as if he’s been waiting for this to come up. “Is this about the newspapers?”

“I was just wondering,” he says. _Not about me._ “But you don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.” 

“I’m afraid there isn’t much to tell,” he says, stirring the onions and garlic with a wooden spoon, the familiar scent wafting out of the kitchen. “I don’t have any memory of her.”

“I’m sorry,” Noct says.

“In all honesty, it’s not something I’ve ever thought much about,” Ignis says, dumping the bowl of deep orange diced carrots into the pot. “One would think it should affect me more than it does. But Noct, feeling grief, or a sense of loss, is nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I know,” Noct mumbles to his notebook.

“In all honesty, I wish I felt more. I believe sadness would be the more natural reaction, but apparently, it’s just not in me.” He laughs a little bit, in a self-depreciating way, and when Noct glances up there’s an uncharacteristic blush on Ignis’s cheeks. Ignis is _embarrassed_ that he doesn’t feel sad. Noctis really is the worst human on the planet.

“I wasn’t crying,” Noct blurts.

“Noct, it’s really nothing to be ashamed of.”

“No, I’m not just . . .” He balls his hands into fists, trying to leech tension from his voice. “I know it sounds like an excuse, but a _bug_ flew into my eye. Literally. Actually. Honestly.”

“I see,” says Ignis. He sounds kind of amused, not horrified, so that’s a start. “Go on.”

“I’ve never cried about my mother. I don’t think about her not being there, either. But then that picture came out and everyone started telling me how _normal_ it was to be sad, even Gladio, and Prompto told me he’s _adopted_ to help me feel better, and I just . . . never realized I was supposed to be feeling sad this whole time.” Wow, he really has a penchant for bringing it all back to himself. “So thanks for telling me. That you don’t. ‘Cause me neither.” Shit, there he is again. “Thank you.”

Ignis sets the lid on the pot and comes to sit down at the table. “Look at the pair of us, feeling sad that we don’t feel sad.”

“Think we’re sociopaths?” Noct says.

Ignis chuckles. “No, I do not. And I must confess that hearing about your own lack of tears makes me feel better about my own.”

“Well, that’s something, after I made everyone else miserable.”

Ignis taps the side of his glasses. “Did you, though? Or did your display of emotion merely allow them to express what they were already feeling?”

He considers this for a long moment. “Iggy, that’s deep.”

Ignis smirks. “I'm nothing if not insightful.”

Noct blows his bangs out of his eyes. “I do feel bad now, though. That I don’t know much about my mom, besides that I look like her. My dad just says I take after her when I hate Citadel crap, so she was probably awesome.”

“My uncle will talk about my mother sometimes, if I ask him," Ignis says. He thrums his fingers on the table. "Actually, once I asked, he started feeling free to bring her up on his own.”

“I see what you’re doing here,” Noct says, leaning back and crossing his arms, but he can't help the grin on his face.

“You’re a sharp one,” Ignis says, pushing his glasses back up and going back to the kitchen to finish the soup.

* * *

“Dad, could I talk to you for a second?”

His father hangs back in the hallway. There’s a guard standing nearby, but it’s probably the closest they’re going to come to being alone for a while, with how busy the King is. So he swallows and forces himself to say it. “Uh, I just wanted to say. I don’t know much about her, so if you ever wanted to talk . . . about Mom, you can.”

His father’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly, and he puts a hand on Noctis’s shoulder. His grip is warm and heavy, as ever. “She loved you, Noctis. And . . .” He trails, and his eyes crinkle into a smile. “And she really, really hated vegetables.”

They grin at each other for a moment before his father is back off to duty and Noctis is heading down to train with Gladio. But he feels something, like a door cracked open, in the spot where his heart's supposed to be.

He's still smiling as he wipes away a little something from his eye and keeps walking.

**Author's Note:**

> It's still that AU where they cry and talk about feelings.


End file.
